Thread: Gove: would you trust him? Board: Hell / Ship of Fools.


To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=005597

Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
How can the Tory party even contemplate appointing this excuse of an individual as their leader and PM?

Nobody would ever trust him.

He's a deceitful and arrogant smart arse. Only half as clever as he thinks he is.

A disgrace to Aberdeen.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Tulfes:
He's a deceitful and arrogant smart arse. Only half as clever as he thinks he is.

That could be said about most of the senior members of the Tory party. Of the rest the only thing you'd need to change is the personal pronoun. If you thought Cameron was trustworthy then trusting Gove will be only slightly more challenging.
 
Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
Andrea Leadership impressed on the Andrew Marr show.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Tulfes:
Andrea Leadership impressed on the Andrew Marr show.

Off to a flying start with a name like that.
 
Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
I warmed to Andrea, even if she is a Tory lady from the English shires. She's admitted to suffering from post partum depression in the past. Brave.
 
Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
I prefer Teresa May. She impressed in her TV interview. But so did Nicola Sturgeon. How about transferring UK leadership to the Scone?
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Tulfes:
Andrea Leadership impressed on the Andrew Marr show.

She hasn't impressed anywhere else IMO. Campaign coming across like a leadsome balloon.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
No, he was a terrible Education secretary.
 
Posted by Rocinante (# 18541) on :
 
I would trust him to destroy forever our relationship with Europe, privatise the NHS and education, and remove most employee rights and protections. Otherwise, no. He has an agenda and he'll do or say whatever is necessary to achieve it. Fortunately, I think most Tory MPs feel the same way about him.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rocinante:
I would trust him to destroy forever our relationship with Europe, privatise the NHS and education, and remove most employee rights and protections. Otherwise, no. He has an agenda and he'll do or say whatever is necessary to achieve it. Fortunately, I think most Tory MPs feel the same way about him.

Well, this.
quote:
Originally posted by Tulfes:
I warmed to Andrea, even if she is a Tory lady from the English shires. She's admitted to suffering from post partum depression in the past. Brave.

I've plenty of mates I quite like that I would not trust to run a lemonade stand, much less a country.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
The interesting scenario is if May wins the Parliamentary Party by a country mile and then the party in the country imposes Fox, Gove or Leadsom on them. So then you'd have a PM and Leader of the Opposition with a mandate from the Party and no real support in the Parliamentary Party.

Incidentally, when Fox ran in 2005 the Labour Party solemnly put it about to the press that he was the one man they feared. Unfortunately none of the staffers repeating this line to the lobby hacks was entirely able to keep a straight face.
 
Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on :
 
That sounds familiar.
 
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on :
 
I would trust him to destroy everything of value within range of the 10 Downing Street, and deliver a bucket full of bitter, poisonous cinders to whoever had the misfortune to succeed him.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
The interesting scenario is if May wins the Parliamentary Party by a country mile and then the party in the country imposes Fox, Gove or Leadsom on them. So then you'd have a PM and Leader of the Opposition with a mandate from the Party and no real support in the Parliamentary Party.

I really hope your spidey sense is wrong about that. All the bookies are making it a run-off between Andrea Leadsom and Theresa May. Both are pretty scary prospects, but Leadsom has extraordinary confidence that we will do better as a nation outside of the E.U. Particularly extraordinary since she believed the exact opposite three years ago.

Sure, I heard her explain her change of mind in the Andrew Marr interview. I thought she was glib. Too certain. It seems a very large volte-face in a short space of time. She seems almost evangelical in her certainty. And that is actually very worrying indeed. Since it appears to be very different to the view of the Governor of the Bank of England, post Brexit.

I think I heard naked ambition speaking.

[ 03. July 2016, 19:39: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think I heard naked ambition speaking.

What else would it be. I'm still getting over Gove's "I did everything I could to avoid putting myself forward for the post of Prime Minister". Of course it's ambition. The job is a poisoned chalice. Everybody hates you, you have to be friendly and affable to heads of state you may personally have no time for, you spend a huge amount of time travelling, and you have to eat for Britain. It's not a job most of us would want.

[ 03. July 2016, 20:07: Message edited by: Ariel ]
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
That sounds familiar.

You need to look up the French Ambassador to Mongolia in the 1980s. According to Gore Vidal he could be seen wandering the streets of Ulan Bator muttering to himself "I am here, because they fear me in the Quai D'Dorsay". Clearly the man to solve the impasse in the Labour Party.
 
Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, he was a terrible Education secretary.

I see this as quite encouraging. The last Tory Education Secretary despised by the left who made it to No10 was quite successful...
 
Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
The interesting scenario is if May wins the Parliamentary Party by a country mile and then the party in the country imposes Fox, Gove or Leadsom on them. So then you'd have a PM and Leader of the Opposition with a mandate from the Party and no real support in the Parliamentary Party.

Possibly. But I think a lot of the candidates in the Tory leadership race are offering different shades of the same one-nation Conservative agenda. That's quite different, it seems to me, to the very different ideological positions of the Labour leader and his would-be successors.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think I heard naked ambition speaking.

What else would it be. I'm still getting over Gove's "I did everything I could to avoid putting myself forward for the post of Prime Minister". Of course it's ambition. The job is a poisoned chalice. Everybody hates you, you have to be friendly and affable to heads of state you may personally have no time for, you spend a huge amount of time travelling, and you have to eat for Britain. It's not a job most of us would want.
I didn't explain myself clearly enough. Leadsom and May live in the shadow of Thatcher. The shadow Mrs T casts is that conviction and leadership go hand in hand. And of course there is some truth in that.

But what we have over Europe is so complex that a pretense of certainty, purely to give the impression of conviction, is a misreprentation. And if Leadsom has managed to convince herself, sincerely, of that level of certainty, then she is just misleading herself for the sake of ambition.

Oh sure, such certainty will play well to the Tory gallery. It will sound like the reincarnation of Mrs T. But the job needs a realist from day 1. Someone with their feet on the ground.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, he was a terrible Education secretary.

I see this as quite encouraging. The last Tory Education Secretary despised by the left who made it to No10 was quite successful...
The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce...
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, he was a terrible Education secretary.

I see this as quite encouraging. The last Tory Education Secretary despised by the left who made it to No10 was quite successful...
She wasn't admired by many on the Tory right, who never forgave her for abolishing many of the grammar schools.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
I can't find the article now - so quickly are events elbowing to the front - but some Tory MP writing in The Telegraph was rubbishing Gove as a drunken blabbermouth. No sooner would he have downed his morning bottle of gin than he'd be on to the Kremlin/Bejing/The Guardian 'You're my speshil frien' you are. Lemme tell you shomshing' - was the implication.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
One of Boris' team. Apparently, it's not just Remainers who are bad losers.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
One of Boris' team. Apparently, it's not just Remainers who are bad losers.

What was more interesting about that article was that Lynton Crosby had - at least originally - been on Boris' team.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
One of Boris' team. Apparently, it's not just Remainers who are bad losers.

What was more interesting about that article was that Lynton Crosby had - at least originally - been on Boris' team.
IIRC, he ran Boris' re-election campaign for Mayor of London.

Mind you, he also ran Michael Howard's "Are you thinking what we're thinking" campaign in 2005, so I think the 'sinister genius' bit is a bit unwarranted, or at least the second word is.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
The interesting scenario is if May wins the Parliamentary Party by a country mile and then the party in the country imposes Fox, Gove or Leadsom on them. So then you'd have a PM and Leader of the Opposition with a mandate from the Party and no real support in the Parliamentary Party.

Possibly. But I think a lot of the candidates in the Tory leadership race are offering different shades of the same one-nation Conservative agenda. That's quite different, it seems to me, to the very different ideological positions of the Labour leader and his would-be successors.
At the moment it is currently the position of Her Majesty's Government, and the current front runner for the next Prime Minister, that they cannot confirm or deny whether or not EU nationals in the UK will be denied the right to reside here. This isn't one nation conservatism, the sort of thing expounded and practiced by Macmillan and Major. Even the blessed Margaret would have been backing away slowly, muttering: "whoah! too rich for my blood!" We are in Enoch Powell territory, here. Yeah, yeah, it probably won't happen. Well, guess, what it shouldn't even be on the fucking table. It's a bloody disgrace. The PM and the candidates for the succession ought just to be able to stand up and say: "We are Eurosceptics, not fucking monsters, of course anyone who is here presently has a right of residence and we will enshrine it in any future treaty".

And, do you know what, if the events of the last few years have taught us anything it is that the previously unthinkable becomes all too plausible. Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, Donald Trump as Republican Nominee for President, Britain leaving the EU. Two years ago I would have laughed at you. Now the laughter is the hollow, bitter note of gallows humour. One minute, it's the stuff of recondite texts and savage cultists in obscure backwaters, the merest possibility, dancing in and out of sight, playing gently on one's synapses in the small hours of the night, little more than a reminder not to drink absinthe, smoke hashish and read the Necornomicon in the same evening. Suddenly, the next thing we know Ryleh has emerged from the watery depths of the Pacific, dread Cthulhu has slipped his bonds and emerged from his slumbers and after his millennial kip of strange aeons, he's a bit fucking peckish. We live in strange times. And there is something of an Innsmouth look about our new masters.

Still, let the court reassure itself that all is well at the masked ball, as the King in Yellow draws nigh. These are solid One Nation conservatives with solid One Nation policies who are currently unable to reassure the Shadow Home Secretary that his fucking wife and the mother of his children won't be deported. What a bloody disgrace.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
Oh, and Boris has now declared for Andrea Leadsom. This may mean nothing or it may mean everything but if you have a can of Shoggoth repellant, don't leave it at home.
 
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Would I trust Gove? Not as far as I could kick him. Which I might have to try to demonstrate how far that is.

But then, none of the the front-runners are much more trustworthy that a used car salesman with polyfilla on his hands. That has been the problem, there is nobody at the top of the party who can invoke trust on the party and the people.

There is much the same problem in the Labour party. We seem to lack politicians who are respectable at the top. I think that is a deep and fundamental problem in our political systems today.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
It's all rather academic now, as the Tory party in Parliament rate him third behind Theresa May, who is an established pro-Remain minister and Andrea Leadsom, a low-profile Brexit minister.

I like to think that Gove's machinations have come home to roost.
 
Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
It's all rather academic now, as the Tory party in Parliament rate him third behind Theresa May, who is an established pro-Remain minister and Andrea Leadsom, a low-profile Brexit minister.

I like to think that Gove's machinations have come home to roost.

An MP friend of mine (no names, no pack drill - and neither Mr Gove nor an ally of Mr Gove) suggested to me that the general feeling within the walls of Westminster remains that he had no ambitions of being Prime Minister, and no expectations of making the final 2.

In that reading the whole thing was a sudden moment of post referendum clarity which lead him to torpedo the Johnson bandwagon for the good of the nation and at the expense of himself.

Not sure I believe that, but it *is* believable I think.
 
Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
And anyway, he is now out of the running.
 
Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Oh, and Boris has now declared for Andrea Leadsom. This may mean nothing or it may mean everything but if you have a can of Shoggoth repellant, don't leave it at home.

Shoggoth: as H.P.Lovecraft has it -

It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.*

I have to concede that it's a pretty good description of the Conservative Party leaders. They form and un-form to suit what they perceive to be the prevailing weather conditions politically. Let's hope they can weasel out of Brexit as they have out of so many election promises.

*And that's just one sentence!
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
If the government weasels out of Brexit, or is weaseled out of it by the negotiatians, then the 2020 general election could be very nasty indeed, with UKIP picking seats all around England and Wales on the back of continued frustration and the growing acceptance of xenophobia as a political force.
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Did anyone else see this cartoon? Says it all, I think.

[ 11. July 2016, 11:19: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
 
Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
If the government weasels out of Brexit, or is weaseled out of it by the negotiatians, then the 2020 general election could be very nasty indeed, with UKIP picking seats all around England and Wales on the back of continued frustration and the growing acceptance of xenophobia as a political force.

In some areas yes, but in others maybe not. My MP supported Leave and is currently having her arse kicked all over the local press as most of her consituients didn't. Next election could be interesting.

The real problem with Brexit is no one actually knows what it is as Leave / UKIP never had a plan for if they won. [Roll Eyes]

Tubbs
 
Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Did anyone else see this cartoon? Says it all, I think.

How to fall on your sword without really trying.
 


© Ship of Fools 2016

Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.5.0